NATURAL CYCLE IVF | MINIMAL STIMULATION IVF | CONVENTIONAL IVF | IVF TREATMENT COMPARISON CHART
WHICH IVF TREATMENT IS BEST FOR YOU?
When it comes to making decisions about your body and family, knowledge truly is power. While we are dedicated to the more natural and gentle approaches of Mini-IVFTM and Natural Cycle IVF treatments, you should feel confident in your decision before committing to either. To aid you in this most important and personal decision, we have provided educational information below about all IVF treatments; not all clinics offer all treatment types, so be sure to ask. We hope this helps you to better understand your choices.
There are essentially three categories of IVF treatment plans: they are Natural Cycle IVF treatment, Mini-IVFTM treatment (called minimal stimulation IVF elsewhere), and conventional IVF treatment. Each varies slightly from clinic to clinic, but the process is generally universal. All IVF treatments involve ensuring one or more eggs mature during a woman's menstrual cycle, extracting the eggs near the time of ovulation, fertilizing them with sperm to create embryos, and implanting the embryos back into the woman's uterus for hopeful pregnancy. What distinguishes the three types of treatment is the dose & type of IVF hormonal drug therapy prescribed (to aid the body to develop multiple eggs); whether or not those drugs are daily injections or consumed orally; the number of eggs targeted in each IVF attempt; & the total cost to achieve a live birth.
The Natural Cycle IVF Treatment
Natural Cycle IVF is the most natural, drug-free IVF treatment available. Natural Cycle IVF allows women to undergo IVF without the excessive emotional, physical, and psychological effects associated with the high doses of hormone therapy prescribed for multiple egg recruitment. This natural method requires no recovery time between treatments, allowing for consecutive treatments and multiple opportunities to become pregnant within a span of 3-6 months. It provides all this while reporting pregnancy rates comparable to conventional IVF.
Further, women who have been denied conventional IVF treatment, because of an inability of produce multiple eggs (including many women over 40), will find Natural Cycle IVF an attractive option, as it is performed with only one egg per cycle.
The draw back with Natural Cycle IVF is also its benefit; since it relies on the one egg nature provides with no IVF drugs, there is a 30% chance the follicle will contain no egg and this cannot be discovered until during egg retrieval. Also, since no drugs are used to control the timing of ovulation, the timing of egg retrieval is delicate - if the egg retrieval timeframe is miscalculated the eggs could be either immature or could prematurely ovulate before the egg retrieval can be done. However, cycles can be repeated consecutively over a 3 to 6 month period which will give you a similar chance to have a baby as if you had gone through 2-3 cycles of Conventional IVF during the same 3 to 6 month timeframe.
Natural Cycle IVF treatment was actually the world's first IVF treatment, resulting in the birth of a child in 1978, Louise Brown, who herself just gave birth naturally. Today the presence of innovative, new technologies has made Natural Cycle IVF more effective and has renewed its popularity and demand. Cumulative pregnancy rates as high as 32%, after three cycles, are now being reported.
The Natural Cycle IVF treatment is the safest, most gentle, holistic treatment a woman can choose. It uses no IVF hormone drugs to stimulate the ovaries for multiple egg recruitment. Instead, it embraces the one "quality" egg (viable for a live birth) a woman produces naturally each month. The one draw back of Natural Cycle IVF is also its greatest strength; since it relies on the one egg nature provides, there is a 30% chance that the follicle will contain no egg, but, unfortunately, this can only be discovered during egg retrieval. Further, since no drugs are used to control the timing of ovulation, the timing of egg retrieval is delicate. If the egg retrieval timeframe is miscalculated, the eggs could be either immature or could prematurely ovulate before the egg retrieval can be done. Unlike conventional IVF, however, a new treatment can be started immediately upon your next cycle. Because Natural Cycle IVF is drug-free, it does not require the commonly prescribed 1-3 month rest period associated with conventional IVF treatment. This gentle method can be repeated consecutively over a 3 to 6 month period, which will give you a similar chance to have a baby as if you had gone through 2-3 cycles of conventional IVF during the same 3 to 6 month timeframe.
The Natural Cycle IVF treatment is ideal for women who wish to avoid altogether the pain of 20-60 IVF drug injections per month & the great chance of twins expected with conventional IVF-ranging from 13-33%, depending on the patient's age. Natural Cycle IVF is also highly competitive on the basis of cost, averaging $2,800 for the treatment and $0 for drugs per attempt, compared with $7,500-$12,000 for treatment, plus $2,500-$5,000 for IVF drugs per attempt using the conventional IVF method. Click here for an IVF treatment comparison chart.
New Hope Fertility Center was one of the first fertility centers in the US to provide Natural Cycle IVF and, consequently, we are proven experts in the treatment. At New Hope Fertility Center we are dedicated only to gentle IVF approaches, and Natural Cycle IVF remains one of our primary treatments.
Minimal Stimulation IVF Treatment - Mini-IVFTM
You also may not have heard of the Mini-IVFTM treatment (also called Minimal Stimulation IVF) even though it has been time honored since 1967 when it was first approved in the US. Advanced technologies have also thwarted minimal stimulation IVF, our Mini-IVFTM treatment, back into the spotlight and it's making a comeback with unprecedented steadfast growth.
It too embraces a more natural, holistic approach to IVF, whereby excessive drugs & daily injections are avoided. The Mini-IVFTM treatment, seeks to mature roughly 3-5 ?quality' eggs with the help of 1 Clomid pill daily & no more than 1-3 injections of Menopure per cycle prior to egg retrieval. Clomid stimulates your ovaries to mature the maximum number of "quality" eggs (the ones needed to create quality embryos and live births) your body can typically produce in one cycle.
As you read on, you'll see the Conventional IVF method aims to maximize the number of eggs retrieved, regardless of egg quality. With Conventional IVF it is possible to retrieve 8-15 eggs, but we know only 3-5 of those will produce embryos capable of sustaining a healthy pregnancy, and the Mini-IVFTM treatment deliberately focuses only on those 3-5 quality eggs. See an IVF Treatment Comparison Chart.
For this reason, we recommend the Mini-IVFTM treatment for most women. We believe high-dose expensive daily injections are painful, wasteful, and risky especially when you will likely have a similar outcome to Conventional IVF. The Mini-IVFTM treatment implantation pregnancy rate is 7.41 - 24.5% depending on the age of the woman -comparable to Conventional IVF which is 7.6% - 28.9%, less expensive ($4,800-$5,100 versus $10,000-$17,000), requires no daily injections which makes it very easy and stress-free, and has fewer long term health risks. Also, there is no wait time. If pregnancy doesn't result in one cycle, you can immediately begin again next month. Conventional IVF commonly requires a wait of 1-2 months before you can start a new treatment cycle. And, in particular women with high FSH levels or an inability to produce multiple eggs due to age or poor fertility health should absolutely always use the Mini-IVFTM treatment (or Natural Cycle IVF if she can only produce one egg). The Mini-IVFTM treatment is simply an easier experience.
New Hope Fertility Center is a globally recognized expert in both Natural Cycle IVF and Mini-IVFTM treatments, and 95% of our cycles are done using the Mini-IVFTM treatment.
HyperStimulation IVF Treatment
Conventional IVF is the most aggressive of all IVF treatment options, and is the most commonly known and widely used of treatments. It has an implantation pregnancy rate of 7.6%-28.9% (depending on the age of the patient) and costs $10,000-$17,000 per cycle including drugs.
Conventional IVF aims to disassociate a woman's ovaries from her internal hormonal control and relies solely on injection hormones to recruit the maximum amount of eggs possible (usually 8-15 eggs in women under 35). It is possible that more than 3-5 of those eggs (as many as 4-10) will be fertilized into embryos, but typically only 3-5 embryos survive implantation, full term pregnancy, and healthy live birth. In order to mature 8-15 eggs, a woman's ovaries must receive high dosages of IVF drugs, so conventional IVF requires 1-2 daily injections or 20-60 injections over the course of one month. Because the daily injections contain high dosages of hormone medication, the patient requires a recovery period between cycles. If you do not become pregnant in your first attempt, you will typically have to wait 1-2 months to start again. Click here for an IVF Treatment Comparison Chart. Further, pregnancies resulting from conventional IVF have a higher chance of producing twins (up to 33%, depending on the patient's age), and an increased chance of producing multiples (5%).
Many women undergoing conventional IVF treatment are told the more eggs the better their chances of having a baby. What they are not told is that, when it comes to producing a healthy baby, egg quality is more important than egg quantity, and that minimal stimulation IVF and conventional IVF are comparable in terms of the live birth rates, despite the fewer eggs recruited in the Mini-IVFTM
.
Nevertheless for women concerned solely with producing the maximum number of eggs, conventional IVF is the best treatment, particularly for patients under the age of 37 years old who have the potential to make 3-5 quality eggs. Conventional IVF may also be valuable to patients undergoing IVF for pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) for known genetic disorders, cancer patients who only have one month before starting radiation and chemotherapy, and for donor egg IVF cases.